Afternoon

“ The drowsy heat of the afternoon invites to slumber as the cool hours before the noon of night invite to music, reverie, or sentimental conversation, and our midsummer-night dreams would be no worse for a moonlight ramble on the mountains or in the garden-suburbs of a large city. ”

“ It was the beautiful, quiet afternoon that made me think of it. I have always thought that I should like to die on a summer afternoon—not evening, evening suggests night—just when the world seems a little tired, but not worn out, just gently exhausted. I should like the sun to be shining in the soft, warm way it is shining now, and the air to be clear. At night, in the darkness, one feels so far away from everywhere else. ”

“ The afternoon, with its mellow light and declining sun, is like the calm, cool days of October, with its dusty foliage and sear leaves, brilliant in autumnal colors, but ever suggesting the approach of bleak winter, and pointing back to the glories of the past. The morning points forward with a different meaning, and hopefully announces the activity of another day, even as spring is the threshold and the promise of summer time. ”

“ The ripe fruit smiling hang. The afternoon
Is emptied of all things done and things to be.
Low in the sky the inconspicuous moon
Stares enviously upon the mellow earth,
That mocks her barren girth. ”

“ It was a still afternoon—the golden light was lingering languidly among the upper boughs, only glancing down here and there on the purple pathway and its edge of faintly sprinkled moss: an afternoon in which destiny disguises her cold awful face behind a hazy radiant veil, encloses us in warm downy wings, and poisons us with violet-scented breath. ”

“ In the afternoon We will with some strange pastime solace them, Such as the shortness of the time can shape; For revels, dances, masks, and merry hours, Forerun fair Love, strewing her way with flowers. ”

“ The light changes; the morning freshness becomes the grave and solid afternoon, and so dies into twilight; till out of the dark alleys steals the gentle evening, dark-eyed and with the evening star tangled in her hair, full of shy sweet virginal thoughts and mysteries ... ”

“ The morning was sunk away unseen, the afternoon was steadily going too, and he was letting it go. One bright transit of daylight gone by unacknowledged! There was something unmanly, recusant in it. He could not quite reconcile himself to the fact. He felt he ought to get up, go out quickly into the daylight, and work or spend himself energetically in the open air of the afternoon, retrieving what was left to him of the day.
But he did not go. Well, one might as well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb. If he had lost this day of his life, he had lost it. ”

“ First come the maidens of the morning in the delicate colors of early daylight, their faces full of anticipation. Then follow the glowing noontide hours in warm colors, when life and strength are in their fullness, and then the waning hours of afternoon in pale tints and with pensive faces. All are linked hand in hand, keeping perfect step, none missing and none delaying. ”

“ The afternoon has been one of those dreary, drizzly, disagreeable seasons which relax the nerves and ride like an incubus upon the spirits; and my route has conducted me over a broad-spread, desolate plain; for, lovely as [Pg 208] may appear the prairie when its bright flowerets and its tall grass-tops [187] are nodding in the sunlight, it is a melancholy place when the sky is beclouded and the rain is falling. ”

“ In hot climates, the early morning hours, before noon, and late evening hours, after sunset, are, according to the fashion of the place, the chosen hours for calling; but in more temperate climes—resembling our own—the afternoon hours are, as with us, the hours for calling. ”

“ We'll have that at once, so as to give us a good long afternoon."
"The afternoon will be long enough," she said. If I had not known that she was having a day's enjoyment, I should have thought that she seemed rather dejected in her manner. ”

“ One drinks, of course, a great deal of the excellent tea, and, indeed, the afternoon that passes without it is an afternoon that drags a listless, alexandrine length along till dinner, and leaves one to learn by experience that a thing very essential to the local meteorology has been omitted. ”

“ And so it came about that, when dinner was over, the Naylor party and the Wilkies had coalesced, and strolled together to a shady corner of the galleries, where broad awnings, flapping in fitful air-currents, lent a little freshness to the languor of the hot and drowsy afternoon.
CHAPTER III. THE FIRST EVENING.
When the sweltering hours of afternoon have passed on westward, and the shadows creep out to meet the coming twilight in the east, there is an arousing in the world comparable to the quickening which passes across it at the opening of each new day. ”

“ It was the afternoon of the day and the afternoon of his life, and his course was now westward down all the mountains into the sunset. ”

“ And all those afternoons once danced and sparkled in the sapphire light
And iris shade as you have glanced, green afternoon, in vibrant flight.
383As, down dim vistas, echoing, dead afternoons entreat our days,
What breath of beauty will you sing to souls unseen and unknown ways?
How close and how unanswering, green afternoon, you pulse away,
So little and so great a thing—deep towards the bourne of every day.
385 BIBLIOGRAPHY The editors desire to express their thanks to the poets represented in this anthology ”

“ To begin knocking off the habit in the evening, then the afternoon as well and, finally, the morning too is better than to begin cutting it off in the morning and then go on to the afternoon and evening. ”

“ "I mean that everything this afternoon has been too beautiful, and that perhaps everything together will never be so right again. I'm very glad therefore you've been a part of it." ”

“ These days that one begins at six o'clock seem always of unnatural length—what should be luncheon time in the ordinary way is only breakfast time on these occasions; and, when all the hours are unoccupied, how delightedly one would welcome bedtime in the afternoon! ”

“ I shall perhaps go to Church this afternoon from a sort of feeling that it is rather a wholesome thing to do of an afternoon; it keeps one from work and it lets you out so late that you cannot weary yourself walking and so spoil your evening’s work. ”

“ The afternoon is a suitable time, as it enables friends to gather more conveniently from the distance, and as the reception with refreshments is much more easily arranged for than is a breakfast. For an afternoon wedding, three o'clock is the proper hour in the winter, four o'clock in the summer. ”

“ It is the top of the morning, which, in every calling of life, contains an hour worth two or three hours of the afternoon. By the time that the clattering tea tackle is out of the way, the morning is spoiled ”

“ Isn’t it perfectly possible? I’ve got a suit of your civies in the car; we can go outside and exchange clothes; you take Esky and go home, and I’ll come in here and make myself at home until you get back. What’s wrong with that? You said yourself that there’s never anything to do on Saturday and Sunday, and you can be back here to-morrow afternoon. ”

“ Chronically over-tired, she cares little to go out of an evening after the long shop hours, and looks forward to Sunday as the day when she can read in bed till noon if she chooses, snooze again in the afternoon, and perhaps go to a café in the evening. ”

“ In planning entertainments for the morning, the hostess must remember that breakfast will be preferred late, and that the women guests, especially, may prefer to forego breakfast entirely and keep to their rooms until just before luncheon. Thus it is always best to start any entertainment in the afternoon. Long drives through the country, tennis, hockey, golf, card parties—all these are appropriate for the afternoon. ”

“ Sometimes they start on Saturday afternoon, heading 'em till dark, play cards all night, start again heading 'em Sunday afternoon, play cards all Sunday night, and sleep themselves sane on Monday, or go to work ghastly—like dead men. ”

“ The Shropshire Windmill.
Thursday.—Some people inclined to regard as sufficient an arrangement that keeps them sitting day after day from three o'clock in afternoon to midnight listening to talk about Parish Councils. Others want a little more. Channing suggests House shall sit on Saturdays, and, on four days a week, shall commence business at noon, putting in a twelve hour day. ”

“ The afternoons are like a bright vision in a crystal, like a dream, like one of the drops into fairyland quite common people sometimes take. You're the littlest thing, and you leave the most enormous blank. ”

“ The dance commonly begins about the middle of the afternoon or later, after sundown. When it begins in the afternoon, there is always an intermission of an hour or two for supper. ”

“ Later she remembered all the hours of the afternoon as happy--one of those uneventful times that seem at the moment only a link between past and future pleasure but turn out to have been the pleasure itself. ”

“ I returned from the City about three o’clock on that May afternoon pretty well disgusted with life. ”

“ The afternoon, in which the suitors amuse themselves with dance and song, is also called eventide [127] ; when evening, ἕσπερος, comes, they go home to sleep [128] . Besides these larger divisions smaller ones were also indicated, e. g. the morning twilight, ‘when it was not yet dawn but still the twilight of the ending night’ [129] . Before dawn there appears the morning star, ἑωσφόρος, Il. XXIII, 226, Od. XIII, 93. ἠώς, ‘dawn’ in the proper sense of the word, is often used as a time-indication, sometimes in the well-known periphrastic expressions of Il. ”

“ And the morning's walk, stolen from the hour given to a species of repose which seldom rests, may be, without the reproach of indolence, followed by the afternoon's siesta—a practice much to be commended, and greatly conducive to rest of nerves and invigoration of the frame, when used in moderation. ”

“ It was a beautiful summer afternoon, at that delicious period of the year when summer has just burst forth from the growth of spring; when the summer is yet but three days old, and all the various shades of green which Nature can put forth are still in their unsoiled purity of freshness. ”

“ Rose at 5 o'clock and had breakfast before 6 o'clock, so as to make an early start to drive to Gregory to attend the farmers' meeting and hear the lectures by the agricultural experts. The heat is so great that the early morning or late afternoon is the only time to travel. ”

“ Often already, during the fortnight that he had passed under her roof, when she enquired how he meant to spend his afternoon, he had answered paradoxically: "Oh, I think for a change I'll just save it instead of spending it—" and once, when she and May had had to go on a long-postponed round of afternoon calls, he had confessed to having lain all the afternoon under a rock on the beach below the house. ”

“ The queen was in her chamber, greatly distressed at having to wait so long for dinner. The regular hour of supper appears to have been five o’clock in the afternoon, but when private it seems not to have been fixed to any particular hour. In summer, at least, people appear usually to have gone 249 to bed when darkness approached ”

“ Most well-to-do men found time for a siesta in the early afternoon. There was supper, which in modern English parlance would be called dinner, at 6 P.M., and the evening was easily spent with a friend. ”

“ Some men would have stayed in bed till noon, have lounged over breakfast till two o'clock, and have made their cigar and newspaper last them well on into the afternoon. But the earl had never been used to lying late in bed, and he felt no inclination to begin the practice now. ”

“ We may now literally be said to turn day into night, and night into day, while the want of time is the source of general complaint. Our people of fashion, and many of no fashion at all, breakfast at three in the afternoon, dine at seven, sip their tea at eleven o'clock at night, and sup at four in the morning ”

“ Under certain circumstances there are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea. ”

“ If through business travel or other circumstances I stay up late one or two nights a week, I balance books before the week is up by taking a rest on Sunday afternoon or going to bed earlier one or two nights. ”

“ According to the almanac, we have only gained a few minutes morning and evening—scarcely enough, one would think, to make any impression—but one marks the lengthening afternoons at once. We seem to have gained half an hour of daylight at least. This is always the first pleasant change in the new year. ”

“ Time has fallen asleep in the afternoon sunshine. ”

“ It was a Sunday afternoon, wet and cheerless: and a duller spectacle this earth of ours has not to show than a rainy Sunday in London. ”

“ Nine in the Morning, and Three a Clock in the 95 Afternoon, is the best time; as likewise, when the Gnats play much in a warm Evening.
6. In a Cloudy, and VVindy day, after a Moon-shine clear Night, for the brightness of the Night (through fear) making them abstain from feeding, and the Gloominess of the Day emboldening and rendering them (through Hunger) sharp, and eager upon food, they bite then freely. ”

“ I have noticed that the Christianity of a certain class of respectable people begins when they open their prayer-books at eleven o’clock on Sunday morning, and ends when they shut them up again at one o’clock on Sunday afternoon. Nothing so astonishes and insults Christians of this sort as reminding them of their Christianity on a week-day. ”